Sonic the Fighters (ソニック・ザ・ファイターズ), originally released as Sonic Championship in North America and Europe, is a versus fighting game developed for Sega Model 2B CRX arcade hardware by Sega AM2. It was released in relatively small numbers across the world during 1996.

To date, Sonic the Fighters is the only Sonic fighting game of its kind.

Contents

Story

This is the official story from the Gamest magazine, issue 173. Translation by Windii.

A large quantity of robots suddenly appeared on the land where peaceful days continued thanks to Sonic's frequent actions, and laid waste to its surroundings.
"This must be Eggman's doing! But where is this huge bunch of robots coming from..." as Tails muttered to himself, he got an emergency message from Espio.

In the video that Espio sent, there was a huge fortress floating on the satellite orbit. Dr. Eggman was dispatching large quantities of robots from the giant space fortress, "Death Egg 2"!

Sonic decided to get to Death Egg 2 alone using a single-seat space rocket "Lunar Fox" that Tails invented. However, in order to fly the rocket, 8 Chaos Emeralds must be collected to act as a power source. Sonic's friends, who spread throughout the world, were guarding the Chaos Emeralds separately so that they are not misused by Eggman (one of them ended up being stolen by Fang in the meantime, however...).

First, Sonic and Tails flew over to where Knuckles is. "If the rocket is single-seat, shouldn't the toughest guy be the one riding it?" Knuckles provoked Sonic after hearing what's going on. When Sonic, who obviously believed he was the strongest, accepted Knuckles's challenge and was about to fight him, Tails forced his way between the two. Tails proposed fighting fair and square in the ring, and the one who wins against all of their buddies in the world will ride the rocket.

Who will be the one to win against everyone, collect the Chaos Emeralds, and save the world? The gong of fate is now echoing.

Gameplay

Sonic the Fighters is a one-on-one versus fighting game similar in design to AM2's previous arcade fighting game outings; Virtua Fighter (and Virtua Fighter 2) and Fighting Vipers. Like these games, the objective is to attack the opposing player until a health bar depletes to zero over the best of three rounds. Rounds are also time-limited, meaning if nobody is defeated after a time counter reaches zero, the player with the most energy remaining is declared the winner. If both health bars are at the same value at the end of the round, a "draw" is called and the round is played again.

As one of eight selectable fighters, the player is tasked with completing ten matches in succession to beat the game. There are also three buttons, "barrier" (), "punch" (), and "kick" (), which along with a joystick for movement, can combined to perform more complicated moves and inflict more damage. Taking cues from Fighting Vipers, each of the arenas is enclosed by walls, although unlike that game, it is not possible to slam opponents through them at the end of the match.

Like other Sega fighting games from this period, the world is presented in 3D, but characters still fight on a 2D plane (albeit one that "rotates" depending on which moves are used)

Characters

Under normal circumstances, Sonic the Fighters contains eight playable characters, with a further two being controlled exclusively by the computer.

When two similar characters face each other the second player will be replaced with a grayscale version. If a character defeats the first eight opponents, he or she will face Metal Sonic and Doctor Eggman,

Move list

History

Development

Legacy

From the moment of its announcement it was expected, and later confirmed, that Sonic the Fighters would be ported to the Sega Saturn in the months that followed, however no such version ever materialised. Sonic and Tails are not present in the Saturn version of Fighting Vipers either, however Bean and Bark would make an appearance in the 1997 release of Fighters Megamix.